The Universe Of Tomorrow

Aurora Jones

“Zapp, Zapp” Another laser came out of the spaceship opposite Aurora's. Her breathing started to become more and more erratic as the spaceship's lights started blinking red and the words "the 80% damaged” started blinking in bold letters on the screen in front of her. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her nerves and tried to brace herself for the next impact on the space, if she failed to dodge the laser again. 

She had always heard stories of the bravery of the people who went into space and survived there to return to their home planet. She had always been curious about it. But her parents had never encouraged her to pursue her dreams of venturing into space, as they knew of the dangers that waiting for people who dared go there. Her father was a classified space intelligence agent. He was responsible for gathering crucial and top-secret information about space and its hidden components by going on a lot of expeditions. 

However, after he returned from his last journey, he was acting frantic and was always watching his back, like someone would jump out of the blue and kill him. And that is exactly what happened, her parents were killed right in front of her eyes, by three masked people who then ran around the house looking for Aurora, as she was their next target. Aurora, being a smart girl,  ran and hid in the basement and into her dad's spaceship.  However, when the people got into the basement, she had no option but to run away not only from her home but the planet.

It was a hasty decision that she had made at that time and that accidentally made her fulfil her dreams of going into space. She had prepared her whole life for this day, had read countless books, and studied stacks of papers on spaceships and space adventures but nothing could have prepared her for what actually lay in space. 

She shook her head to clear her mind of the memories of what happened to her parents, but it was hard to do. Which brought her to her current situation. Aurora had no sense of direction in space and nothing but a space system to guide her. She randomly chose a planet closer to her home planet to fly the spaceship onto there but in the way her spaceship was attacked by two other spaceships that were much bigger in size. 

She started to fly her spaceship in a zigzag way to manoeuvre her spacecraft with precision and agility to save it from getting a blow from the other spaceship again. She knew that her spaceship would not be able to handle another strike. Amid all the turmoil and chaos, she was shown hope in her life-threatening situation. A notification emerged on her screen that showed that a planet was nearby and could make an emergency landing there.

Her ray of hope vanished by the core-shaking blow that was struck on her spacecraft. The system went out for a second only to come back with the warning clear on the screens. “Crashing! Brace yourself for the impact” and “100% damaged” flashed in bright red. The lights of the spacecraft turned red and a loud, blaring alarm went off. Aurora tried to calm down her nerves as she did not want to faint from the panic attack that she was going through.  

She saw a camera on top of the spaceship and hurriedly stood in the angle to face it. “I am Aurora Jones. I am a 23 year old student. Tonight my parents were killed in front of my eyes by three men whose faces were covered in masks. They were coming for me next so I had no other option but to escape in my father's spacecraft. It was attacked in space and now I don't think I am going to make it. If someone ever finds this video, I request, "No, I demand justice for my parents, Daniel Jones and Martha Jones.” 

As she finished saying those words , the spacecraft lost its balance. It caused the ship to spiral out of control. However, she was lucky enough to reach the atmosphere of the planet closest to her. She saw from afar that she was landing into a planet that consisted mostly of sand. It was like a desert was covering the whole planet. A part of her was relieved that maybe landing on soft sand would not impact that hard and she would be safe. But as she was watching the whole scenario, it changed in front of her. It took only a blink of her eye and what she saw was a planet full of sand changed into something else.